Wow, with Movember arriving tomorrow, I know that 2012 is fast approaching its end – and at King of Shaves we’re all looking forward to 2013, a landmark year for our brand, as it leaves it’s teenage years, and will see us celebrate “Twenty Years of Shaving The World” on April 13th, the day in 1993 that I founded Knowledge & Merchandising Inc. Ltd. (OK, KMI) as the company to launch our first King of Shaves shaving oil (see pic below, wowzer!).

I don’t want to give the game away, but we have much planned for our brand next year, as we see increasing competition from ‘pretenders to our throne’ – the multi-billion dollar competitors who now inhabit our space (in 1993, it was simply Gillette, us and Colgate Palmolive).

In 2013 we’ll be:

Completely refreshing our King of Shaves range of products, stylishly and in a premium way (without charging more) but delivering “The World’s Best” by way of high performance (which is why we use the twitter #Hyperformance).

In Spring (or maybe earlier…) launching @JoinOurKingdom – you can follow ‘me’ on the twitter now, to get early news…

Launching an amazing ( LIKE AMAZING) new product in 2013 > #Hyperformance.

Launching an amazing new RANGEof products…

Building on our global distribution, strategically working with partners world-wide.

And more…

Which brings me to the USA…

We launched King of Shaves at Target in 2000, and between then & 2011, managed the business via our NYC headquartered company. In 2010 we signed a distribution agreeement with the Remington division of Spectrum Brands, Inc., which saw us co-brand King of Shaves with Remington in the USA and launch our Azor 5 in Walgreens and other accounts. For reasons that I am unable to express publicly, this partnership was dissolved in Spring of this year, and from January 1st 2013, it’ll be King of Shaves solo again, doing things in our own way.

This means for much of 2013, there will be a hiatus of supply regarding King of Shaves in the USA, as we strategically decide how to position our successful brand in the USA. It’s never been easy for us there – I’m not too sure why – as we have had an amazing following, but somehow never ‘quite’ broken through (hence us signing with Remington, to see if that might work).

What I can assure our US fans of is A) a commitment to ensure that by 2014, we’ll have our latest and greatest products that will launch in the UK this coming year, there and B) use the internet and e-commerce, online commerce to keep you supplied.

We will be updating our US Facebook presence in the coming weeks, to ensure we have everything ready for January 1st. In the meantime, continue to visit here or get in touch with us via shave.com in the UK.

In the meantime, we continue to enjoy superb sales in the UK, despite the best efforts of our competitors to out-promote and out-market us (NEVER) and as the only privately owned global challenger brand left in high performance men’s shaving and skincare, we love the support you give us. Thank you!

So, here’s looking forward to keeping clean shaven, confident and uber-cool (just like Daniel Craig, another great British smoothstar) and to shaving lives, in the UK and beyond during our (next) 20 years.

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Learn more about the King of Shaves range of shaving and skincare products for men and women at shave.com. Shop online at our secure store. The views expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of The King of Shaves Company Ltd. By viewing and interacting with this blog you agree to our terms of use. E&OE.